Validating a plan-based model of narrative conflict

Abstract

Conflict is an essential element of interesting stories. In previous work, we proposed a formal model of narrative conflict based on intentional planning that is designed to facilitate story generation. This paper presents the results of an experiment to test whether or not our model can answer "who?" "why?" and "when?" questions about conflict similarly to humans analyzing the same stories. Our model has some success at predicting which conflicts human readers will report and performs well at recognizing which characters are in conflict and for how long.